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Spinning disk (HDD) and flash storage (SSD) drives are nearly the same cost these days, so it’s no surprise that broadcasters are turning increasingly to SSDs for long-term storage of our most critical media files. But did you know that SSDs and camera memory cards should be powered up from time to time, to maintain a high writing speed and reliable data storage?
Since the start of the millennium, TV and video services have changed enormously. Along with the changes to the content itself, the infrastructure used to create, process and deliver that content has also changed. However, the rate of transformation is about to increase significantly, with radical changes to multiple facets happening concurrently. The first digital TV services were Standard Definition (SD) and encoded as MPEG-2. Since then, there has been a major shift towards HD, mostly in MPEG-4 AVC and now the early stages of Ultra-High Definition (UHD) using the latest compression standard: High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). Already some SD services are starting to be discontinued and, where SD is still needed, down-conversion from HD is becoming the norm. As each major technology shift is expensive – in terms of content creation, production and consumer devices – it therefore makes sense to have steps where there is a meaningful value resulting from a combination of changes that can occur together.
Considering the unarguably fast clock speed in Media & Entertainment (M&E) today, content enterprises need to be able to rapidly access, preview, share, process and publish content for on-time delivery to an ever-increasing number of platforms and devices. Yet, automation remains in pockets, and work order administration between multiple tasks continues to be manual.
This year at IBC, you will be able to comfortably sit in an 8K living room and enjoy a video broadcast so clear that it will make you lose yourself in a truly immersive experience that practically seems 3-D. This 8K setup will be brought to you by NHK, the Japanese public broadcaster that is leading ultra-high definition (UHD) technology development. Its super-high-vision channel held the world’s first 8K TV satellite broadcast in 2016 at the Rio Olympics, and plans to provide full 8K coverage of the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 have already been announced.
Amazon has taken a key step in its bid to become a leader in global live online broadcasting by winning its first significant sports rights deal outside the US. The company has outbid Sky and the BBC for rights to show the ATP World Tour tennis in the UK apart from the four grand slams.
The UEFA claims that its European Under-21 Championship Final held in Krakow, Poland, was the first in the world to deliver uncompressed ultra HD remote signals over a long distance at low latency. Snell Advanced Media (SAM) delivered a complete Proof of Concept (POC) IP-based remote production system, working together with system’s integrator Gearhouse Broadcast. Live UHD signals from five Sony HDC 4300 4K/HD cameras at the stadium were sent via a specially installed and commissioned pair of fully redundant 100GB Ethernet links.
Is the TV industry due for the next big thing?
Complexity can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it helps us accomplish great things. On the other hand, required workflows can be complex and prone to error. The challenges facing broadcasters have always been in balancing more complexity in delivering creative product against the staffing and infrastructure needed to get the job done. Just because technology can do something great does not always mean it can do so easily.
